Impossible
by denise1
Summary: Jack thinks on the impossible. Grace missing scene


Impossible

By

Denise

Jack parked his truck, automatically turning off the ignition and pulling the key from the lock. He sat there for a few minutes, staring out at the dark street. Unbidden and unwanted, memories of the day returned

XXXXXXXXXXX

_'You heard about Sam?'_

_'Yeah.'_

_'Doesn't sound good.'_

_'Eighteen hours past due for contact, yeah, I'd say something went wrong.'_

_'Well, anyways, I put together a list of planets with stargates in range of the Prometheus route. General Hammond's agreed to send SG teams to all of them. Including us.'_

_'Why?'_

_'Well, if something went wrong, there's a chance they could make it to a planet with a gate—'_

_'At which time, they would gate home, wouldn't they?'_

_'Well, when the hyper drive failed on the Prometheus' maiden voyage, you were nearly stranded on P7X009 because they didn't know where the Stargate was.'_

_'Sounds like a long shot.'_

_'Well, unfortunately, the Tok'ra are unable to send a ship at this time. They've promised to retrace the route of the Prometheus as soon as they can, but visiting these planets is…'_

_'What? Is what?"_

_'Is something.'_

XXXXXXXXX

Yeah, something. He was right there. It was something. But there are times when something is really nothing. He knew why Daniel wanted to search. Hell, he wanted nothing more than to jump in a ship and go look himself. But that wasn't exactly possible, seeing as they didn't possess a single ship capable of hyperspeed.

They used to have one. A sweet little Al'kash. Right up until last month when Carter came up with the brilliant idea to raid his little ship and use its engine to bail the Prometheus out.

Jack hadn't liked that idea either. It was getting to be a galactic joke, every single time he got his hands on a ship, something happened to take it away from him. He was starting to feel like Gilligan finding a way off that damndable island. Every time he had a solution in his grasp, it was ripped away. It was like fate herself was conspiring to prevent him from keeping a ship.

If only she hadn't have taken his Al'kash's engine, he would have a ship to go out and look for her with. Of course, if he still had his Al'kash, then Prometheus would still be stuck on Tangrea and there'd be no need to go looking, he'd know exactly where she was.

Daniel just didn't get it. His search was a real mission impossible. The Prometheus could be anywhere out there. Anywhere.

They didn't even know if the Prometheus was still in this galaxy. What if the hyper drive went cock-eyed again and tossed them millions of light years away like it had when they'd evacuated Vorash?

Daniel's plan also presumed that they had an intact ship to land with. What if they'd blown up? What if they were nothing but atoms and bits of scrap metal flying through space? What if they'd been hulled and were nothing but an empty hulk, a cold and silent tomb in the inhospitable vacuum of space?

Even if they survived and landed on a planet with a gate, what if they happened to crash on the wrong continent? An ocean would make the gate as impossible to attain as if it were on a different world.

How were they supposed to search a planet when all the SGC could realistically explore was a mere fraction of the area, that tiny few miles around the gate that were within range of the MALP and UAV.

Daniel's plan only worked if Prometheus happened to crash on a planet with a gate, and then happened to survive that crash landing and oh, while you're at it, be sure to land within one hundred miles of that twenty foot tall ring over there. Hell, it'd be like jumping out of an airplane at 50,000 feet and trying to land on that penny located somewhere in the middle of that field but we're not going to tell you where it is, you need to find it on your way down.

Overwhelmed by the futility of it all, he climbed out of his truck, the slamming of the car door shotgun loud in the stillness of the neighborhood. Didn't Daniel get it? Yes, he wanted to do something. He wanted nothing more than to go find them, find Carter, and find the rest of the crew. But what the hell was he supposed to do? Run off half cocked, chasing rumors and maybes?

And where would he be when they got some real Intel and had something concrete to act on? Half way across the universe on a fool's errand or too damned tired to do anyone any good.

Walking up the steps, he stuck the key in the lock and stopped, suddenly unwilling to go inside, the familiar dark passages of his house claustrophobically cloying. He couldn't go in, just like he couldn't stay at the mountain. He had to get away from prying eyes and pitying looks, from people that expected him to find a solution and to make it work. He felt like the walls were closing in on him, like the ceilings were going to fall and crush him. He'd had to get out, just like now, he had to get out.

Walking to the back of the house, he climbed up the ladder, seeking refuge in his aerie.

XXXXXXXXXX

_"Carter, you taking anti-social lessons from Daniel?" he asked, climbing up to his perch, not surprised to find his missing guest up here. He'd noticed her slipping out several minutes ago, taking her empty bottle of beer into his kitchen and not returning._

_"I'm sorry, sir. I just…"_

_"Breath of fresh air?"_

_She chuckled. "Kinda. If I have to hear Doctor Lee tell the story one more time…" her mock threat trailed off. Yes, the downside of his impromptu 'we're all alive' party, hearing Bill Lee tell tales about their days in the jungle, tales that got taller with each beer he drank._

_He smiled and sat beside her. "God only knows that it'll be like when he tells his grandkids."_

_"Oh, he'll have single handedly taken out the whole army." They sat for a few seconds, enjoying the mutual silence. "You know, sir, I was thinking—"_

_"Oh lord," he groaned._

_"Doctor Murphy reported back earlier today. He estimates that it'll take them another year to make another core for Prometheus' engines…"_

_"A year?"_

_"You can't exactly just whip one of these out on an assembly line," she excused. "The point is, sir, Prometheus is basically stuck on Tangrea. And even after we make the engine core here, we'd still have to disassemble it to get it through the gate and then reassemble it and…it'd be so much faster if we just had Prometheus here and only had to do it once."_

_"Slight problem with your plan," he said. _

_"Right, if Prometheus was here, then we wouldn't have the engine core problem and we'd have no need to need it here to work on it because it wouldn't need to be worked on," she interrupted._

_"Umm…right," he said after a few seconds._

_"If we just had a way to get it here," she continued, ignoring him. "Like you use a tow truck to get your car to the shop."_

_"We could always ask Thor. I mean, he's brought us back once before," he suggested._

_"Right. Or we could do it ourselves."_

_"Carter, we don't have a ship—" He broke off and looked at her, his stomach sinking at the speculative look in her eyes. "No."_

_"Sir, it'd just be—"_

_"Carter, there is no way in hell my Al'kash will tow Prometheus."_

_"No, it won't," she agreed. "I was actually thinking of the Al'kash's engines…"_

_"No," he said again. _

_"Sir, it—"_

_"No. Do you have any idea what it took for Teal'c and me to get a hold of that ship? Do you have any idea how many of my ships have been taken from me?"_

_"I have a very good idea, I was there every time," she said baldly._

_"We have a working ship," he ignored her. "A sweet little, fully functional Al'kash, not some cobbled together from spare parts piece of..." She stared at him. "Not that the other ships weren't nice.  I mean, the 301 was great right up to the point of it trying to kill us and the 302 handled like a dream and the mother ship, well it was sturdy and all and…"_

_"Colonel, I'm not suggesting we permanently take the Al'kash's engine. We just…borrow it, use it to get Prometheus back here, then you can have the engine back and we'll be able to fix Prometheus in the dry dock, where it'll go much faster than shuffling supplies back and forth from here to Tangrea," she explained._

_"What'd Hammond say?" he asked quietly. She raised her eyebrows at him. "I'm presuming you ran this by him first, what's he say?"_

_She cleared her throat. "That I should clear it with you since you made it rather clear that it was your Al'kash and that you'd take it personally if anyone broke, folded, spindled or otherwise mutilated it," she said, repeating back to him the very same words he'd said to Hammond just a few months before._

_He sighed, turning his head to look off towards the mountain, his eyes easily picking out the flashing lights that sat atop Cheyenne Mountain. "A year, right?" he asked softly._

_"Or more. Thirteen months is actually an inside estimate."_

_"And it's only temporary?"_

_"Oh, definitely. The Al'kash is a tenth the size of Prometheus; it'd be like leaving a four cylinder engine in your truck."_

_"And we can't have that."_

_"No, sir."_

_He sighed again, closing his eyes. "Fine," he said, tossing his hands in the air. "Take it."_

_"Thank you."_

_"Don't thank me yet. There's so much as a scratch on it, you get to go get the next one," he said. _

_"I'll bear that in mind," she said, nonplused by his threat._

_"I'm serious. Here I am, fulfilling our mission objective, acquiring all these ships and people keep taking them away from me. I've hit my quota, it's your turn."_

_She laughed. She laughed at him…and he didn't mind._

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He shoulda went with his original instinct and said no. It's not like Ronson and his crew were marooned forever. They had unlimited access to the Stargate. They could come and go as they pleased. They could have started back on their sub light engines. Yeah, it would have taken a few centuries and all but….they weren't stuck, just inconvenienced.

Of course, what was the fun of Earth owning a ship if it was stuck three hundred light years away? They may as well not have one at all. Which was why he'd said yes. Prometheus needed to be home. It wasn't doing them any good decorating Tangrea. If the truth be told, he really hadn't had a choice. And Hammond knew that. Just like Hammond also knew that Carter was one of the few people that could ask to borrow his Al'kash and get away with it.

Feeling the need to do something, he pulled out the keys from his pocket and unlocked the box in the corner of the deck. He pulled out his telescope, setting it up in a matter of minutes. He sat down, idly looking through the eye piece. Distant stars snapped into focus, glittering pin points of light visible even through the light pollution of the city.

She was out there somewhere, somewhere among those stars. Daniel just didn't get it, didn't realize just how vast it was, how hopeless a search could be. They weren't just looking for a needle in a haystack; they were looking for a drop, a single drop of water in a limitless ocean. And they didn't even know where to start looking.

He shouldn't have agreed to her going, shouldn't have let her hitch a ride back on Prometheus and cooked up some reason for her to come back with the Spielman and the rest of the techies. That's what his gut had told him to do. His gut instinct had been to say no. Regardless of the fact that he had no valid reason to require her assistance here. They didn't have anything in the mission rotation for the rest of the week. In fact, they didn't even have to be on the base; technically both Carter and Daniel were still on light duty.

_XXXXXXXXXXXXXX_

_"So, you got it to work," he said, casually strolling into her lab._

_"Sir?" She looked up from her laptop, her fingers stilling on the keyboard._

_"Hammond just told me. Prometheus is officially un-marooned."_

_"Yep. Well, it's not exactly a perfect fix. The Al'kash's engines won't maintain a sustained hyperspeed. We can't come straight home. We're going to have to do it in a series of little hops, maybe forty or fifty light years at a time, then wait for the engines to cool back down before hopping again. So it's going to take us a couple of days but…"_

_"We?" he asked._

_"Well, yeah. I mean, if something goes wrong, they could be stuck pretty far from home," she said._

_He nodded, slowly walking behind her. "Nice," he commented, noticing the colorful picture on the screen. "Hacking into NASA again?"_

_"What? No, no. At least not here. This is a picture from Hubble, it's a nebula, or we think it is. Actually, it's a lot smaller than your normal nebula are and there's no signs of any stellar matter so it's not a stellar nursery, which is what some people think nebula are and--"_

_"Lemme guess," he interrupted, recognizing the tone of her voice and the sparkle in her eyes. "Prometheus' path home just HAPPENS to run right by this thing?" She got a funny look on her face, her eyes darting around the room, refusing to meet his gaze. "Carter?"_

_"We won't even have to go out of our way. The computer plotted the jumps and one of the cool down points is practically inside the cloud. In fact, that's what made me notice it, the original cool down point was inside the cloud, which wasn't safe and I had to manually compensate for it. We're going to be stuck there for at least two hours anyway while the hyperspeed engines cool down, we could take advantage of the time, get close to the cloud, and take some readings, maybe even a sample, before we're back on our way, no time lost.  It won't cost a thing extra and, well it could just be a bit more interesting than sitting there for two hours looking at nothing," she said in a rush, almost as if she needed to get the words out before he cut her off._

_"What's Ronson say?"_

_"I haven't asked him yet."_

_"Don't you think he'd like to know that you plan to take his ship on a field trip?"_

_"I'm only going to ask him if we do happen to land outside the cloud. If we're able to jump further and miss it then…" She shrugged. "It's been there for a few million years, it'll be there for a few more."_

_"You know, when Hammond gave us the weekend off, I think he had the idea that we'd actually take some time off. As in leaving the base."_

_"I am leaving the base, I'm leaving the planet."_

_"Carter—"_

_"Colonel—"_

_"This is fun for you," he interrupted._

_"Yeah."_

_Jack sighed and shook his head. "I've got to explain the concept of 'fun' to you one of these days."_

_"So, I can go?"_

_He nodded. "Sure. Long as Hammond doesn't care. There's nothing going on this weekend anyway."_

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Sighing, he turned his telescope, fiddling with it until a fuzzy cloud appeared among the stars. Was that it? Was that the gas cloud she'd been to hot to look at? The not-a-nebula that had lured her out there. He wondered if she'd even seen it, if she'd made it that far.

He wondered where she was. If she was ok. He wondered if she'd ever retreat back up here again, taking refuge from Daniel's prattle in the stillness of the night, under the ageless light of immortal stars or if this was to be yet another place where the memories lurked, mingling with regrets in the darkness, waiting to catch their prey unaware.

He wondered she'd ever look through his telescope again, joining him in debating the merits of one star over the other. Arguing over which ones they'd been to and which ones they hadn't, admiring their ageless beauty, or if she'd forever remain lost among them, one light among billions, indistinguishable, indescribable, impossible to hold and just as impossible to forget.

Fin


End file.
